My initial thoughts after playing for a few hours.

[mcallisterw 41]

Hi, I'm new to Simtropolis, I came here to see what other people were saying they liked and disliked and have decided to chip in myself with my thoughts. Like most of you I have played every previous version of SimCity (except Societies) and thought SimCity 4 with the rush hour expansion pack was a very difficult act to follow.

 

On the first day, I played through the tutorial, but that was as far as I got, server issues kept me off the game for the rest of the day, I returned yesterday and managed to get enough time for about 2 hours of gaming, in which I built two cities. I won't dwell on server issues here though, i'll just get a couple of concerns about the always-online DRM concept out of the way at the start. Firstly that this game cost a lot more than most other new releases this year and I'm sure that most of that is becuase we're paying for them to run the servers. In no other industry could the manufactuers of the product get away with adding a feature which limits customer's use of it in order to benefit the manufacturer and then ramp up the price to cover the costs of the feature. Secondly it signifies that EA no longer think they are designing a game like previous SimCitys were, which people will continue to play for many years after they stop supporting the game. As soon as they require the servers for a new game, everyone's copies of SimCity 2013 will become worthless.

 

So initially the game impressed me, the graphics were beautiful (though I found the camera movement a bit limited) and the look and feel of the interface were very nice. I had also been looking forward to drawing curved roads (living in the UK where roads generally aren't straight it's nice to be able to build cities with a similar layout to real cities I know), and the system for drawing roads I found works very well, allowing me to draw curved or straight roads, specific shapes (should I decide I want a perfectly circular road), and better till helping me if I want to draw parallel curved roads. These are mainly cosmetic features, but it brings me to another couple of things I liked about the game. I like the way that roads dictacte land use, you assign zones to frontages rather than parcels of land, and assigning zones is free (with roads being more costly to make up). This caught me out a couple of times, you can quickly run out of cash drawing a road because you're used to being able to scatter streets here and there at very little cost in earlier SimCitys. The type of road also dictates the density of the zone, which is in keeping with what I've already said about roads but I haven't decided whether or not I prefer this to having control of density myself.

 

There are a few other things I liked as well before I get to my criticisms of the game. I really do like the new data views, more beautiful, clearer and more useful than in any previous versions of the game, and I also like the interactions with the citizens of your city, the little thought bubbles above houses and little symbols that pop up to give you instant feedback on things such as adding a park in a residential area makes the people who live there happier. The idea of being able to extend buildings is really good as well. It's nice to know that eventually each school in your city will have its own unique appearance, and if you need extra capacity it is more realistic to extend what you have first, before demolishing a small building to build a bigger one.

 

The first issue is the thing I noticed right from the outset. I went to start a new game and had a look at all the regions available to me to build in. None of them really took my fancy, I like a city on the mouth of a river which I can build a port around and bridges across. Never mind, I'll create my own using the terrain editor... except I can't becuase there isn't one. Suddently it seemed like there were very few options for where I could start my city, big disappointment before I'd even started a game, never mind, let's get started.

 

The biggest criticism I have, which many other people on here are also complaining about is the size of the cities you can build. The trailers gave the impression this game would continue in the fine tradition of SimCity of building on an epic scale and I was looking forward to getting started on my own metropolis. Unfortunately the first city I selected was very small. 'Is that it?' I thought, 'I must have selected a beginner city, I'll go back to the regions and find a bigger city'. Unfortunately as most of you now know. This is your lot.... literally!

 

This is SimCity not SimNeighbourhood, the biggest complaint is hinted at in my very first paragraph 'the first two hours of gaming, in which I built two cities'. When I say I built two cities, I mean I filled the city area and ran out of space, this isn't something which should happen after two hours in SimCity, this is something that you work at for days and feel very proud when you achieve. Although as someone on this forum has already pointed out that the objective of the game isn't to create a square city that fills your whole area, wth SimCity 4, you could then start building seamlessly into the neighbouring area, but as areas don't neighbour each other any more, that is no longer an option.

 

Another thing I like with my cities is the ability to customise them, renaming buildings and streets and plopping neighbourhood signs was all part of the in-depth SimCity experience. You didn't just have a collection of roads and buildings like some kind of engineering project, you had a living breathing city. I feel that SimNeighbourhood has pared back seriously on the customisabilty, starting with the removal of the ability to name things but I also notice that gone are the options for which kind of bridge you want when you cross water. I know that the ability to name streets wasn't included in SC4 until the Rush Hour expansion pack, but from the general feel of this game, I doubt will see any expansions like that for SimNeighbourhood.

 

There is also a lot of paring back of the micromanagement aspects of SimCity 2013, I won't bother to list everything I've seen here, but I think most of us will agree when I say this iteration of the game seems a lot more 'dumbed down' than before. EA are seeing the success of simpler games like *shudder* Farmville, and going for the mass market, are there not enough people who like an in-depth game with many layers of complexity to drill down into, to keep EA in business? It doesn't seem so here, but maybe I'm wrong, the game has been a big seller so far and maybe it will become a huge smash, breaking into markets which SimCity previously didn't reach. Maybe the marketing guys in the EA boardroom are high-fiving each other as I speak.

 

Overall I think the game is a lot easier, they throw mini-challenges at you, but in the original games, the real challenge was simply to build a functioning city, and this no longer feels like a challenge. This is another thing inherited from the 'Appmageddon', games that are really just cute diversions, no challenges because people who play apps don't like losing, they want to create (but don't want to customise really) and then share, and perform the odd little challenge.

 

So in conclusion, I have compared the game with apps and browser games like Farmville, and I think that is pretty much what we have here, a new SimCity for the appmageddon, SimCity Lite, SimNeighbourhood, Townville. At most a pretty diversion. The biggest disappointment is that already I'm getting a little bored of the game, I've only been playing for a few hours and it already seems repetitive. I didn't wake up this morning exciting to play the game, I didn't play it until late last night. I really don't know how long this game will keep my imagination for. Which is a shame, because in my view the things it does badly are the things which SimCity always stood out for doing well.

[fetkokko 6]

Couldn't agree more.

 

It's nice to see that more and more people are realizing the severe restrictions this game has. Even on the official forums, people who were initially pleased with the game are getting to the point of boredom due to the lack of expandability and customization.

 

Let's just hope that Maxis agrees, and saves this game.

[macvirt 361]

Everyone who realises the artificial constraints should also realise that they are not the type of customer that EA wants for its portfolio. 

[TFM1874 4]

This could end up being a massive flop, I dont own the new one - hell I only discovered it was out yesterday - but have watched loads of videos and read loads of reviews and comments on here. From what I have seen so far, I will be sticking with SC4 for a good while yet, I will keep an eye on how things improve with the new game but the problems so far have put me and probably another good few thousand people off buying the new game.

[fetkokko 6]

Everyone who realises the artificial constraints should also realise that they are not the type of customer that EA wants for its portfolio. 

 

True. Sad, but true.

[PeterLloyd 11]

I have just built a 125000 population city and understand how frustrating it is when you have used every part of your city. But its something that adds another complexity to the game, i am actively looking at where i can improve upon my city design. 

[mcallisterw 41]

I have just built a 125000 population city and understand how frustrating it is when you have used every part of your city. But its something that adds another complexity to the game, i am actively looking at where i can improve upon my city design. 

It presents a different challenge, which some will relish, but so would buying a completely different game. I think there are still a lot of people, who while appreciating some of the improvements, feel like they've ended up with 'SimNeighbourhood' instead of 'SimCity'.

 

I for one love a bit of complexity, it's not just because expanding your city to meet a new challenge is easier than redesigning it to make the best of limited space, it's because at the end of the day I like to have a big sprawling metropolis that I can spend hours just exploring with the pause button pressed, building little backstories to the different neighbourhoods and thinking to myself 'I built that'... I miss that.

[The Legacy 0]

I have just built a 125000 population city and understand how frustrating it is when you have used every part of your city. But its something that adds another complexity to the game, i am actively looking at where i can improve upon my city design. 

...That's why you build in small regions in Simcity 4 for!

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

Agreed, the best way to described the game is limiting, the tile size alone ruins the game for me, not to mention pre-set regions we have no control over. I regret buying this game. Won't be playing it much.

[mcallisterw 41]

 

Put it this way, if they had just called the game 'SimNeighbourhood' and marketed it as a spin-off rather than a successor to SimCity where you build a neighbourhood rather than a city, and focusing on completing challenges and sharing with other users rather than on management and complexity there would be no problem here. Some people would think it sounds fantastic and buy it and be very happy with it (server issues notwithstanding), it seems most of us (me included) would simply have ignored it like we ignored societies and continue to wait for the next SimCity... and perhaps some people who loved SimCity but fancied a different kind of game would have found they enjoyed it.

 

I think the problem here is many people feeling disappointed that they had been waiting for a successor to SC4, it finally arrived, it was at a hugely inflated price but we'd been so excited with the anticipation we bought it anyway, only to find that (in our view) it wasn't SimCity at all.

[Digma 1]

Give it 6 months or a year and we'll have an expansion "going big" or they'll expand it like they did with the Sims, although I wonder how they would?

 

They are now catering for the masses that have grown accustomed to play similar games with their limits on Facebook. This game simply isn't built for people who like the way SC4 was setup, where you could simply build a huge metropolis that flowed over from city to city with different sizes and worked very well for modded content and with that giving you quite a bit of freedom.

 

I like the game so far, if they iron out the bugs, it'll be even better. I also have good hopes for the future, but I guess only time will tell.

[perafilozof 143]

The problem is that your looking at the game as if it where SimCity 5. It's not, its based on a totally new idea of specializing cities in order to make them cooperate. It may be SimCity in name but this is a new game. Once you get over that you can start enjoying it. You simply have to play it as it was meant to be played.

 

It's like watching the Hobbit and being disappointing that it wasn't a Lord of the Rings movie. That is because it's not. It is just set in the same lore.

[mcallisterw 41]

The problem is that your looking at the game as if it where SimCity 5. It's not, its based on a totally new idea of specializing cities in order to make them cooperate. It may be SimCity in name but this is a new game. Once you get over that you can start enjoying it. You simply have to play it as it was meant to be played.

 

It's like watching the Hobbit and being disappointing that it wasn't a Lord of the Rings movie. That is because it's not. It is just set in the same lore.

 

But the game is called SimCity, its marketed as the successor to SimCity... EA told us it was the successor to SimCity. Your point would be valid if they had called it SimNeighbourhood, but they didn't so it's not.

[mcallisterw 41]

Give it 6 months or a year and we'll have an expansion "going big" or they'll expand it like they did with the Sims, although I wonder how they would?

 

They are now catering for the masses that have grown accustomed to play similar games with their limits on Facebook. This game simply isn't built for people who like the way SC4 was setup, where you could simply build a huge metropolis that flowed over from city to city with different sizes and worked very well for modded content and with that giving you quite a bit of freedom.

 

I like the game so far, if they iron out the bugs, it'll be even better. I also have good hopes for the future, but I guess only time will tell.

 

I'd love it if they did. I'm not massively hopeful though. As far as expansion packs go, it would be a pretty major one and I don't think EA have the appetite for it. This isn't the only game I've played this year that has led to me to think that PC Gaming is increasingly becoming led by the browser/app/casual gaming market. As far as the large developers are concerned away.

[Digma 1]

I'd love it if they did. I'm not massively hopeful though. As far as expansion packs go, it would be a pretty major one and I don't think EA have the appetite for it. This isn't the only game I've played this year that has led to me to think that PC Gaming is increasingly becoming led by the browser/app/casual gaming market. As far as the large developers are concerned away.

Unfortunately a lot of developers are going for easy cash by filling a gap from a less demanding group of social gamers. Offer a limited game for free and have people pay €5 for a virtual cow, seems to be a good business model to them. Obviously the increasing tablet market isn't aiding to the PC consumers interests either. There are simply to matter platform to cater nowadays and developers/publishers are looking to maximise their profits to keep shareholders happy in a bad economy. In that way making a PC game is an insecurity to them (pirating and high development costs, with a fairly uncertain return on investment).

[ddav6108 18]

I have been forever lurking on Simtropolis as I love the mods for SC4 and have been playing it since early highschool... I am now in my second year of teaching and I'm still playing it! Talk about a game that keeps your attention.

 

I wanted to just add a few things. This had occurred to me the other day when I briefly started playing the new SimCity. What happens when they turn of the server? We paid for a licence to use the game, and they cannot deny us that, be it now, or ten years down the track when the latest CoDmodWad comes out. Gargh. Makes me angry just thinking about it.

 

Another thing is YES! I love being able to build a city for a reason then have that city continue onto another tile... Pure awesomeness in game design! One thing about the game that kept me coming back was that it was so complex that I could play it without really understanding the complexities, learn more about the game and find new depths, learn even more and plunge deeper into the game. SimCity is as it is... But what it isn't isn't bad.

It does still have the complexity, it really just isn't shown. Aggregrate stats should have been included, average age, average incomes, etc. They can be included if they wanted to. But they haven't.

 

In saying that there is so so so much potential there. With a few alterations im positive this game can be better than SC4. It has the basis for being so.

 

All in all, I am sad to admit I do agree with the OPs statements, but I am quietly optimistic about this game.

[mcallisterw 41]

I have been forever lurking on Simtropolis as I love the mods for SC4 and have been playing it since early highschool... I am now in my second year of teaching and I'm still playing it! Talk about a game that keeps your attention.

 

I wanted to just add a few things. This had occurred to me the other day when I briefly started playing the new SimCity. What happens when they turn of the server? We paid for a licence to use the game, and they cannot deny us that, be it now, or ten years down the track when the latest CoDmodWad comes out. Gargh. Makes me angry just thinking about it.

 

Don't quote me on this, but I read an article in PC Format today entitled 'Could Steam Be Evil'. It was a pretty lighthearted article about doomsday scenarios involving Steam leading to a dystopian future.

 

Anyways, one of the things they mentioned was the possibility of the big game developers deciding to turn servers off after a few years, or preventing people selling licences so games can be sold as second hand.

 

The upshot is, a European Union ruling has decreed that a computer game is a product, not a service. Therefore if they turn off the servers (without at least turning off the DRM so it can be played offline), they are infringing consumer rights in the same way that the dealer who sold you a car on finance can't decide a few years down the line 'Actually I don't want to you make any more payments, I want the car back instead'.

[bigbamdaddy 1]

City size is only the tip of the iceberg and the flaw you notice early on. The lack of terraforming the next one. Even if you are somewhat fine with that initially (surely not happy, i have yet to encounter someone who says, that they love the city size and don't want the option of terraforming), the longer you play, the more you notice flaws in game design.

 

I really enjoy playing the game, it is not a bad game, but in it's current state I'm not sure, how often I'll be playing in the coming months. I have yet to try some road layouts, building greatworks and specializing in casinos or culture, but if I have done that, there isn't much more.

 

I think the issues with map size becomes bigger if you try to specialize your city. Yesterday I started a city to specialize eventually in education and electronics. I started with 1/4 industrial zoning of the map and about 1/6 residential and commercial. This worked pretty well (considering i built other cities in the region). Then I added an education-complex which nearly has the size of the residential-area. After that i was going for electronics. The Space you need for all those buildings is insane. But it is the most efficient way to play in regards to income. It's barely a city-simulator, I just need to place more and more electronics-factories and eventually replace the zoned areas.

 

At one point my population was up to ~40k, with higher wealth citizens right of now it is about 15k. Im running a deficit of ~35k/hour  but have an income of nearly 2m/months thanks to trading electronics. The small map-size dictates that you can't have both, you either go a specialized route and eventually use nearly all of your space for that, or you build a city and live with a small income.

[mcallisterw 41]

It seems a point has been reached where I'm now too bored of the game to be bothered playing it. I went to play and apparently when you save a game you save it to a particualar server, so you can only resume your save game on that server. So my previous server is now always full, I selected another server and discovered that additionally I now have to play the tutorial again.

 

So I just quit the game, this is the first time in almost a week I have come to the game, and it doesn't have enough of a hold on me for me to be bothered going through minor inconveniences like this in order to play it.

 

I shall keep an eye on the game to see if any updates make it a better game.

[viviancyu 7]

I know this is going to be unpopular, but I really rather like the smaller map aspect. I like the idea of making the most out of a small piece of land, of not being able to have EVERYTHING and having to make do with several cities working together. I really like the idea of building the biggest region as opposed to cities, and I actually find it a more realistic approach to city micromanagement. I work as a civil engineer, and I loved Sim City 4 as well. But it sprawled beyond what you could completely control at one time, I had corners of my map that would be turning into slums without me noticing. I know there are a lot of people here who love building sprawling cities, but I think the challenge of building a high-population high-density small city to be much more engaging than a high-population low-density city where all you needed to build bigger was to build wider. The idea of having a set constraint and forcing you to find use of every inch of land, doing urban renewals where necessary and starting over when things need to be bigger, that feels much more like real city planning to me.

 

With that said, I find the ideology mentioned above to be at odds with what actually goes on in the game. The trading aspects between cities in a region should be easier, there's no reason why one city should have to gift resources like oil or coal to another, rather than an automated trade process. I watched a video that sort of simulated this, but it didn't reduce the cost of importing from another city vs. importing from global market. That's a major flaw. How can you expect cities to build cooperatively towards a great region if something so simple as trading resources is such a pain? Then there's the roads issue. If building the highest density with least amount of traffic involves building a giant 1-road intersectionless city, then that's absurd.

 

I do mostly roads design and planning, so I love that the new SimCity depends so much on your roads design, but it doesn't realistically simulate traffic patterns. It also doesn't put the transit modes into the best use. Why don't the sims know how to use streetcars and buses in conjunction with each other? When the maps light up to show your coverage by streetcar or bus, they should really be showing up together, because in real life, you would take a streetcar across large stretch of the trip, then bus to the more specific destination. You should be able to have a transit network with streetcars as the spine, and bus branching out like capillaries. The game has yet to address this issue.

 

So yeah, I really appreciate the ideology of the game, I think the initial "vision" that the developers had was actually very valid. I just don't think it was executed properly. Then again, these are all things they can fix and patch up now that they've forced online only. So I fully expect these issues to be fixed. It might take a really long time, but I do look forward to the complete package when this is done.

[cirugo 1,889]

The online-only requirement is only the beginning of what needs to be fixed about this game...as your experience attests to.

[mcallisterw 41]

I know this is going to be unpopular, but I really rather like the smaller map aspect. I like the idea of making the most out of a small piece of land, of not being able to have EVERYTHING and having to make do with several cities working together. I really like the idea of building the biggest region as opposed to cities, and I actually find it a more realistic approach to city micromanagement. I work as a civil engineer, and I loved Sim City 4 as well. But it sprawled beyond what you could completely control at one time, I had corners of my map that would be turning into slums without me noticing. I know there are a lot of people here who love building sprawling cities, but I think the challenge of building a high-population high-density small city to be much more engaging than a high-population low-density city where all you needed to build bigger was to build wider. The idea of having a set constraint and forcing you to find use of every inch of land, doing urban renewals where necessary and starting over when things need to be bigger, that feels much more like real city planning to me.

 

With that said, I find the ideology mentioned above to be at odds with what actually goes on in the game. The trading aspects between cities in a region should be easier, there's no reason why one city should have to gift resources like oil or coal to another, rather than an automated trade process. I watched a video that sort of simulated this, but it didn't reduce the cost of importing from another city vs. importing from global market. That's a major flaw. How can you expect cities to build cooperatively towards a great region if something so simple as trading resources is such a pain? Then there's the roads issue. If building the highest density with least amount of traffic involves building a giant 1-road intersectionless city, then that's absurd.

 

I do mostly roads design and planning, so I love that the new SimCity depends so much on your roads design, but it doesn't realistically simulate traffic patterns. It also doesn't put the transit modes into the best use. Why don't the sims know how to use streetcars and buses in conjunction with each other? When the maps light up to show your coverage by streetcar or bus, they should really be showing up together, because in real life, you would take a streetcar across large stretch of the trip, then bus to the more specific destination. You should be able to have a transit network with streetcars as the spine, and bus branching out like capillaries. The game has yet to address this issue.

 

So yeah, I really appreciate the ideology of the game, I think the initial "vision" that the developers had was actually very valid. I just don't think it was executed properly. Then again, these are all things they can fix and patch up now that they've forced online only. So I fully expect these issues to be fixed. It might take a really long time, but I do look forward to the complete package when this is done.

 

Someone on a review I read pointed out a flaw I'd hardly noticed myself but now I have noticed it seems like such a glaring flaw.

 

In some maps, you can only have one road in and out of your city, and no matter how smartly you plan your roads around your city, you'll always have traffic jams on that one road.

 

As for realism, I don't know, certainly the small city size gives its own challenges, but I wouldn't call it realistic. The small town I live in at the moment would spread over several map tiles if it were to be recreated in SimCity, to build a big city you end up with a standalone city centre with no suburbs at all, just a big square mass of skyscrapers surrounded by untouched virgin land. I know of nowhere like that in real life.

 

In theory, even if they provided a larger map tile, I think that redeveloping the centre of your city would be a good idea as opposed to always only building new development on the outside of your city. The cost of building new roads means that a new brownfield development would be much better value for money than a new suburb.

[Panos 29]

If you run 2+ cities, traffic isn't that difficult to fix it seems. 

 

First of all, the entry to the map, should go straight to the industrial area, and never be used to cross into the residential. 

 

Some times might need to go around the map, but that is ok, because the commuting traffic from the other cities/outer world, it will never use the same road as the home traffic. 

 

The only traffic that from the "outer world" will hit the inner city, are the construction trucks and the new people moving into the city. So even if these have to go the long way around, doesn't matter. 

 

 

Splitting the inner & outer commuters, is paramount I believe. 

 

The 2x2km city is adding a weird challenge that others like, others not. And is damn expensive when you want to demolish half the city to rebuild it. Especially when you have to demolish plop-able buildings going 100k+ per pop. I like it. Because the city is not any more fire and forget. You need to actually interact and fine tune it all the time. 

 

 

But from the other hand, a city with 2 oil rigs, 1 recycling, some industrial (no more than 10-15 factories), and trading depot, can run at 20k-30k very happy population, and make around 400k-500K per day. 

 

So is down to what you want at the end of the day.  

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

The more you play the worst this game gets, more and more issues surface, this game needed 6 months more development and some design decisions were just plain bad.

[lew1984 231]

I lasted about 3/4 nights of play but have more or less lost interest also. Small city tiles are too restrictive and just as my city starts to take off growth is impossible as you reach the edge. Services suffer as a result as I cant expand in order to pay for the costs of utilities, education, etc. Other cities cover these services ineffectively causing huge problems eg other cities fire trucks fail to turn up to extinguish fires, resources that don't get transferred in the region in their entirety.

[Daniel Yates 1]

To put it simply, the game is now in an open beta state that we have paid to test on the basis that we already have the full game when 'released'. This is what I have been telling myself to stop feeling down about the game. In all honesty I really do like the game because I can see where it is going, but it is far from there yet. This release screams of the original Cities XL all over again - it wasn't ready but MC didn't have a team who could handle getting it finished post early release and therein lies our hope. Can Maxis get this game finished on the fly? If so I reckon we will have a great game on our hands and if not then woe is me!

[lew1984 231]

To say that is fair enough but It shouldn't really be acceptable for a company to release unfinished products, or something that has not been tested properley, thats like saying its ok to release a film that is half complete, or a car thats saftey systems have not been fully tested due to lack or resources.  

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

I lasted about 3/4 nights of play but have more or less lost interest also. Small city tiles are too restrictive and just as my city starts to take off growth is impossible as you reach the edge. Services suffer as a result as I cant expand in order to pay for the costs of utilities, education, etc. Other cities cover these services ineffectively causing huge problems eg other cities fire trucks fail to turn up to extinguish fires, resources that don't get transferred in the region in their entirety.

 

Yep this and the poor simulation engine ruin this game for me, already stopped playing, biggest let down for me in a  long time. Unless they fix this agme up I won't be playing it much if at all.

[Daniel Yates 1]

To say that is fair enough but It shouldn't really be acceptable for a company to release unfinished products, or something that has not been tested properley, thats like saying its ok to release a film that is half complete, or a car thats saftey systems have not been fully tested due to lack or resources.

Oh I'm not saying it is ok, just that that is how it currently seems. I have taken great issue with buying the Prima guide as well considering the information in there is hugely incorrect, but that is for another topic I think.

[lew1984 231]

To say that is fair enough but It shouldn't really be acceptable for a company to release unfinished products, or something that has not been tested properley, thats like saying its ok to release a film that is half complete, or a car thats saftey systems have not been fully tested due to lack or resources.

Oh I'm not saying it is ok, just that that is how it currently seems. I have taken great issue with buying the Prima guide as well considering the information in there is hugely incorrect, but that is for another topic I think.

Double disappointment for you then... that's not good.